Late reply:
Texture streaming is bad. 100% bad.
UE3 uses it and textures pop all the goddamn time. Same with Cryengine 3 and Frostbite 2.
Its only good use is for consoles since they have very low vram, and even then it's not pretty.
I prefer all textures to be preloaded.

I've never seen texture popping in a game outside of Rage, but that was only when I was on an old crappy ATI card and the game ran at 1 FPS. That game is playable proof that a streaming system can be under incredibly heavy load and still have zero pop-in.

I ran RAGE on a non-crappy ATI card and I still got horrendous texture-popping.

Rage is the absolute worst case scenario for a streaming system. It has to stream straight from the hard drive with an insanely CPU (or CUDA) intensive transcode and the whole process starts the moment you actually see the texture. VRAM is still a constraint on even the new 3 gig cards so freeing it up is very valuable if you want texture detail and decent AA.

That picture was taken off a shitty server with 4k models at 4 in the morning. There were still 10 or so completely populated servers at that time too

yeah you're right
games.on.net servers are constantly full
you know why I don't play those servers? cause I got banned permanently for knifing a barrel and screaming at the top of my lungs "BARREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
when i put in a support ticket they said i was banned for severe racism
not just racismSEVERE racism

Late reply:
Texture streaming is bad. 100% bad.
UE3 uses it and textures pop all the goddamn time. Same with Cryengine 3 and Frostbite 2.
Its only good use is for consoles since they have very low vram, and even then it's not pretty.
I prefer all textures to be preloaded.

Vram isn't all, games load a lot of textures into the RAM, so if you have low system ram then they will pop alot; an example of a game that texture streaming is done right is 4A.

Why are people complaining about streamed textures ? Do they still have a bad taste left in their mouths from "RAGE"; If you want to see an engine that does it really well Check: 4A engine (Metro 2033) The only thing that engine needs is to get Antialiasing.
As for FXAA, FXAA sucks and blurs everything, while SMAA actually fixes the Aliasing.http://static.glitchvid.com/random_p...aamlaamsaa.jpg

I wonder if they've included the cloth physics from Dota 2's version of the engine?

I personally doubt it, the cloth physics fit a lot better in DOTA2 due to the more tribal look / style of the characters, you just don't see CT's wearing loincloths (Although it would be funny).
That said, It could be used for some cool things if they included it (Or stuff like weapon-straps and Terrorist's bandannas)

I was more wondering if they're using the same engine, or if they've split it in half.

Its most likely a branch off of L4D2's engine (Because it already has weapons implemented) and has a bunch of stuff from Portal 2 thrown in.
Which means when I go through and update all the textures (Its literally the first thing I'm doing when I get the game) I'm going to base it off of L4D2's system.

Jigglebones can be used to simulate cloth, but not realistically, cloth doesn't jiggle or float with the weight that they have; nor do they interact with such features it has. But what is new is REAL cloth simulation, and soft body physics.

I personally doubt it, the cloth physics fit a lot better in DOTA2 due to the more tribal look / style of the characters, you just don't see CT's wearing loincloths (Although it would be funny).
That said, It could be used for some cool things if they included it (Or stuff like weapon-straps and Terrorist's bandannas)

yeah you're right
games.on.net servers are constantly full
you know why I don't play those servers? cause I got banned permanently for knifing a barrel and screaming at the top of my lungs "BARREL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
when i put in a support ticket they said i was banned for severe racism
not just racismSEVERE racism

against barrels

That made my morning, thanks.

Anyway. I hope they add a few more shotguns this Friday. I'm ready to try the Nova's pellet-based counterparts.

I tend to hammer buttons when i'm not being engaged, and also swirl my mouse around a lot, something I should really stop actually.

Anyways the fog since the update is not really a problem anymore, although I still prefer no fog, i'd say it adds challenge when your enemy blends with the background, it forces players to look harder for enemies when entering an area.

Also wow most of the time I've spent playing the beta I come across quite bad players, most of which run around spraying, complain the games shit and then leave.

The nice thing about it is that we can raise lightmap grids (make them lower res) on the outsides of levels, because its only needed for rough ambient, and we can lower them inside (higher res) for greater detail where there is no dynamic lighting.